Ian Whyte (born 17 September 1971 in Bangor, Wales, UK) is a British actor, stuntman and professional basketball player. After showing promise at school, Whyte studied and played the game in the United States, at Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, and at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. He returned to the UK in 1994 and attracted the eye of the England coach. He played 80 times for England across nine years, also playing club games in Belgium, France, Portugal and Greece before ending his career at the Newcastle Eagles. He is 7 ft 1" in height.

Interviewed at Wales Comic-Con 2013, Whyte described playing Gregor Clegane:

"Gregor Clegane is, without a doubt, one of the worst characters ever committed to literature, let alone film or television. Playing a villain, you can always let go, completely, forget about reality, and just got with it. But Gregor Clegane is one of these characters which requires, you know, a real emotionless performance, because this is a man who lacks any kind of humanity or emotion on any conceivable level. But yeah, he's a difficult character to play, but he is enjoyable."[3]

When asked about being recast into the role starting in Season 2, he said:

"It's always difficult to step into another actor's shoes, you know, but it's just one of those things, they asked me to do it, and I said, yeah sure."[4]

Whyte said that a big problem is that it is hard to connect to Gregor when playing him, because fundamentally, Gregor is a killer, rapist, and child murderer, and Whyte doesn't have any relevant experience in these things.

Whyte explained that he intentionally tried to remove as much emotion from the performance as possible, and director David Nutter encouraged this as well. Arguably, the one emotion that Gregor displays in the books is unprovoked rage, but they decided that it would be more effective to play Gregor as practically emotionless, the idea being that no man possessing anything close to a human emotion could be as callously brutal as Gregor Clegane, or commit acts of such wanton brutality (in contrast with Conan Stevens' brief turn as Gregor in Season 1, in which he played him as an enraged, screaming brute). [5]